I shall not here enter into the niceties of Chinese grammar to show that Dr. Giles is wrong. I will only say here that if Dr. Giles is right in supposing that the character se (色) is a verb, then in good grammatical Chinese, the sentence would not read se nan (色難), but se chih wei nan (色之維難) to define it, is difficult. The impersonal pronoun' chih (之) it, is here absolutely indispensable, if the character se (色) here is used as a verb.
But apart from grammatical niceties, the translation as given by Dr. Giles of Confucius answer, when taken with the whole context, has no point or sense in it at all.
Tzu hsia asked, what is filial piety? Confucius said, "The difficuly is with the manner[1] of dong it. That merely when there is work to be done, the young people should take the trouble of dong it, and when there is wine and food, the old folk are allowed to partake it,—do you really think that is filial piety?" (Discourses and Sayings Ch. II. 9.) Now the whole point in the text above lies in this,—that importance is laid not upon what duties you perform towards your parents, but upon how—in what manner, with what spirit, you perform those duties.
The greatness and true efficacy of Confucius' moral teaching, I wish to say here, lies in this very point which Dr. Giles fails to see,—the point namely
- ↑ Campore another saying of Confucius 巧言令色 Ch'iao yen ling se, plausible speech and fine manners (Discourses and Sayings Ch. I. 3.)
